Reiland Rabaka

Malcolm X and/as Critical Theory Philosophy, Radical Politics, and the African American Search for Social Justice

The principle objective of this article is to examine Malcolm X as a critical theorist. Malcolm is viewed as a significant contributor to the Africana tradition of critical theory as articulated by several Africana Studies scholars and Africana philosophers in specific. This article argues that Malcolms social and political philosophy provides radical theorists with a new paradigm and point of departure for developing an Africana critical theory of contemporary society.

THE SOULS OF BLACK RADICAL FOLK W. E. B. Du Bois, Critical Social Theory, and the State of Africana Studies

W. E. B. Du Bois provides an important, though often overlooked, Africana history, culture, and philosophy – informed framework for (a) redeveloping Africana studies and relating it to the crises and conundrums of the 21st century; (b) reconstructing critical social theory, making it more multicultural, transethnic, transgender, and non-Western European–philosophy focused; and (c) reinventing what it means to be an insurgent intellectualactivist (one who relates critical theory to radical political praxis). Du Bois has been hailed as an historian, sociologist, Marxist, and political activist but never an early interdisciplinary social theorist with concrete political commitments to not simply Black liberation and racial justice but to womens liberation, the poor masses and working classes, and colonized people of color worldwide. He has long been praised and criticized by scholars who have interpreted and reinterpreted his work, often overlooking its deep critical theoretical dimensions. In this article, Du Boiss multifarious and ever-evolving social theory is situated at the center and examined for its significance to the discourse and development of Africana studies, contemporary radical political theory, and revolutionary social movements.

Revolutionary Fanonism: On Frantz Fanon's Modification of Marxism and Decolonization of Democratic Socialism

It is important, at the outset, for us not to confuse what I am calling “revolutionary Fanonism” with Henry Louis Gates Jr’s conception of “critical Fanonism.” For Gates “critical Fanonism” entails not reading Frantz Fanon to ascertain what his lifework and legacy offers to the ongoing struggle against imperialism, but an intertextual exercise that critiques others’ interpretations of Fanon, especially if the interpreters attempt to connect Fanon’s critical thought to radical political practice. Gates (1999), sternly states “My intent is not to offer a reading of Fanon to supplant these others, but to read, even if summarily, some of these readings of Fanon” (252). Ultimately what Gates provides is a part post-structuralist, part postmodernist, and part post-colonialist read of Fanon that surreptitiously serves as a theoretical substitute for the Frantz Fanon who decidedly committed himself to: revolutionary decolonization; the Algerian revolution; revolutionary Pan-Africanism; revolutionary humanism; and a distinct African-centered brand of democratic socialism with serious implications for revolutionary re-Africanization. That Fanon, which is to say, the Fanon who revealingly wrote A Dying Colonialism (1965), Toward the African Revolution (1969) and, of course, The Wretched of the Earth (1968), is tellingly absent from Gates’ Black Skin, White Masks-based read (or, rather, misread) of Fanon. In Gates’ own words: